Month: February 2013

Rabbit in the Moon

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“The Rabbit in the Moon” – a pendant made by my father. I just found this one while cleaning up my office. I still need to polish it up, but here it is as I found it.

Dad made a lot of things like this; it’s one of the things I miss about him; his abstract logician’s mind turned concrete in silver.

He made these out of old silver coins (a 1940’s Australian florin in this case). He said he learned the skill in the army; he was in the south pacific in WWII, and spent long, tedious hours on troop ships. Jewelry was one of the ways he passed the time, sitting on deck to catch cooling breezes, working with small hand drills and files to shape bits of silver coin (in the days when coins were still made of silver).

The image is of the Rabbit, pushing a wheelbarrow down a hill; my father used to say the wheelbarrow contains “books with pale blue covers, about the goodness of life”.

Miss you, Dad.

rabbit_moon

FXDB rolling again

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My FXDB Street Bob has been down for a couple of months; shortly before the holidays, the shifter arm broke loose.

This wasn’t your usual ‘harleys suck’ problem, this was all operator error; I fucked up the shifter spline when I was trying to adjust the shifter a few months back, and my kludge job finally failed.

The moral is, don’t force it, and don’t do the job if you don’t have the right tools. Yeah, yeah, I know.

Sunday night I looked at the weather report, and found that, unlike most of the country, here in northern CA we’re experiencing lovely spring weather; highs in the seventies this week. It occurred to me monday morning, just exactly how pissed I’d be if the weather tunred perfect and my ride was down; so I gave in, had the steed towed in, and a day later had it running again.

Warrantees are a good thing.

fxdb

(Pic taken with iPhone 5, processed with instagram,

and then processed more with aperture.)

bitter bowl, tasty cup.

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kaepernicking
It’s called ‘Kaepernicking‘.

I know it’s only a fucking game.

I get that, ok? But it’s my game.

I started watching the San Francisco 49ers play football at the perfect moment: early in the 1981 season. I got to see a team that had langusied at the bottom of the stats for some while rise, phoenix-like, from the ashes of a terrible season, and rise to the peak of football success.

I was there when it started; watching the start of what would be the most successful run of championships in football history.

Sometime in the 90’s, I lucked into a season ticket. I was there for the last years of the Steve Young era; I was there in the stands for Jerry Rice’s last game as a niner. I was there for the Jeff Garcia era. I was there for the last flirtation with greatness in the mid ninties, and I was there when it all sort of collapsed around our ears.

I regrets now that I had to give up my tickets; this year, I wanted them back, so badly. This year, it felt like 1981 over again.

But it wasn’t. Not quite. Because in the last seconds of super bowl XLVII, for the first time ever, it didn’t go our way, and we lost a superbowl.

I point no fingers; yes, the officiating sucked; yes, at times, we sucked. Coaching mistakes were made (on both sides). For whatever reason, that day, they did better than we did.

It feels fucking personal. Not like any other loss I can remember. And I think I’m going to be angry about this one for a while; maybe ’til Sepctember and we’re back on the field, maybe ’til the playoffs end. Hell, maybe until we get to our seventh super bowl; I don’t know. But I’m pissed off.

On the other hand, I posted the above picture (of me ‘Kaepernicking‘) partly because there’s another team I’m now following passionately – the San Jose Sharks NHL hockey team. It’s not the same – football is in the blood, I grew up watching college  with my father and my aunt, and have been following the niners now for thirty-plus years. But the Sharks have me as much as the niners did back in the days of our second and third superbowls. Hockey is a different thing, a different game.

I didn’t get the above tattoo for my hockey team – but it still represents it to me now. And god dammit, after the crushing disappointment of Super Bowl XLVII, one thing will make it better; lord fucking Stanley’s mug.

Go Sharks.

 

 

Roland Pacheco’s blog

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I wanted to give a shout-out to Roland Pacheco, a tattooer, writer and owner of X-Isle Tattoo in Hawi, Big Island, Hawaii.

I’ve met him a couple of times, but have yet to get inked by him (timing problems; I dive a lot when I’m in hawaii so it leaves my windows to get tattooed somewhat problematic).

The thing I specifically wanted to share was some of his brilliant breakdowns of how he designs the polynesian work he does; I’ve never seen anything like it.

Here’s an example of one of his diagrams (click the image to see Roland’s writeup).

 

 

cara_foot

 

 

The details on design elements like use a the fibonachi sequence and meaning of both shape and content is absolutely wonderful.

Roland’s blog is here, and his shop website is here.

This is the best shop I’ve found anywhere on the Big Island. It’s a long way from Kailua-Kona, but it’s worth it.